Melinda and Paul Sullivan Distinguished Lecture | "For America," The Poetics and Politics of Experience

Join us for a distinguished guest lecture by Patricia Hills, Professor Emerita of Art History, Boston University, focusing on the modes of political engagement within the works of Jacob Lawrence, Benny Andrews, May Stevens, and others.

After World War II, many artists from the 1960s to the 1990s turned again to figuration as a means of clearly engaging with then-contemporary issues. Professor Hills will discuss how this approach helped artists convey the human experience as it related to civil rights, war, and more.

Hills has published books, catalogue entries, and essays on 19th- and 20th-Century American art, African-American artists, art and politics, and contemporary art criticism. Her recent books are Modern Art in the USA: Issues and Controversies of the 20th Century (2001), May Stevens (2005), and Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence (2009). In 2011, she received the College Art Association award for “Distinguished Teaching of Art History.” She is currently bringing to completion the Catalogue Raisonné of Eastman Johnson, which will be a public access, interactive website.